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First post updated with a click by click video showing off the production of a background from the game and some music from the game.

[Idea:]

Idea: 2DMatty
Atmosphere: 2DMatty
Functionality: Eazy-O
Technique: Eazy-O

Snatcher

(Nothing to do with Hideo-whathisface. I just think we need more 90's cyberpunk adventures)

I definitely second Snatcher. Also Alone in the Dark and Call of Cthulhu.

Planetfall. Clock Tower. Silent Hill. Tex Murphy. The Mystery of Haunted Hollow (I think it had enough promise as a world to expand on). Laura Bow. Codename: ICEMAN. Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Metroid, the adventure games. Mortal Kombat. Jazz Jackrabbit. Alan Wake. Dead Space. Mass Effect. Resident Evil. Sweet Home.

I think Jane Jensen's pitch video is my favorite so far.

Heh. That's pretty much why I like Police Quest. 

I did get some of those dead ends, like the crystal in the yeti cave, but I entirely forgot about them.

I still say the pros outweigh the cons. Well, I've said my peace, but I could have said it better. Chock it up to my terrible debating skills and my thoughtless rashness. I'm not out to make anything personal, I just jump to the gun too quick when I have a disagreement. I actually greatly respect this community. I wouldn't be here if I didn't, and there is a lot of talent here. I'd just as quickly jump to defend this place as I would to defend Sierra. I apologize for my uncivility.

@Eric: Ew. I hate how you say a love of Sierra like it's a bad thing. Sierra isn't the pinnacle to me. It's simply equal to Lucasarts and Infocom and Infogrames and such- and it strikes me since I backtracked on my first statement I've been very civil. My responses are well reasoned. Are they over-the-top because they're long and defensive? I have a lot to say on the matter and I have a perfect right to be defensive on the matter.  

It just means we're human beings with different tastes, goals and ideologies when it comes to games.

Wait a minute. This idea hasn't been applied even once so far in this topic. People have done nothing but call Sierra subpar and mediocre and bad, and I've been doing nothing but argue for the idea that Sierra isn't bad because it runs under a different ideaology and philosophy of game design. It seems like all of the most important things I've said have been brushed over and ignored in an attempt to make this about me. That irritates the shit out of me. I mean, I started it, but apparently the fact I backtracked on my statement regarding respect doesn't really matter?

Really, Fawful, nobody here's it "attacking" Sierra games, but a lot of people don't like some aspects of gameplay they offered. Yes, it does give weight to a game when you can fail. But there are a lot of cases in Sierra games where you failed without it being obvious you are about to fail or you don't even know when you failed until some time later.

I can't think of a Sierra game that does this more than once. KQ5 with the cat. LSL3 with the locker. I know I'm forgetting instances, but my memory is poor, so feel free to list ones I've forgotten.

Also, what is the opinion that not liking Sierra games, makes me somebody who can't handle a difficult puzzle?

I really hate how I went out of my way to say that I wasn't saying this in my post and it was entirely ignored.

Adventuring should be dangerous, but in an adventure game that offers exploration, it's not really fair if that exploration causes death. What if every time you examined something, your computer crashes, would that still be fun?

That's not really....a good comparison, but okay. I have played a game to the finish that crashed on me every time I moved from room to room. I still enjoyed the game, and I consider it a near masterpiece, even if my computer hated it. It just wasn't the game's fault.

What if you just played for 3 hours only to find out you cannot progress because 3h ago you didn't do something or, even worse, you weren't at a certain location. Yes, that maybe makes it realistic, but it doesn't really make it fun nor does it offer immersion for me.

This is a valid point, but it's a level of difficulty I enjoy. I admit in this case, this is just my personal taste. However...calling a game bad because you didn't have fun....doesn't work? I can't get myself to finish Grim Fandango, but I still LOVE everything about the game.

It's not bashing if you don't like something.

No, but not liking something often leads to bashing. I don't like Citizen Kane but I acknowledge it as a great piece of filmmaking.

Yep. I take umbrage. Lots and lots of umbrage. Don't know what umbrage is but I take plenty of it. Too much talent went into these games to call them bad or even sub-par, and it's taken people like AGDI years to remake even one of them, so complex are they. I'm not so much on the offensive here, as I'm on the defensive. And I don't see why I should back down at all. These people made games the way they wanted, and they thought out every aspect. You guys call it bad because it frustrated you or you didn't have fun, or because you were generally inept at the games. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how the game should be engineered to suit you. I think games should be engineered just as much to give you a finish point you can get to as it should be engineered to defeat or best you. Exploration is dangerous, and good adventure games should have good exploration. Deaths don't have to be there, but I prefer it when they are. I prefer adventuring in a hazardous environment. I prefer it when things don't always go according to plan. I prefer games that require trial and error to solve. I can't count how many times I've had to start text adventures over, figuring out each step until the finish. And what's wrong with that? Gamers have gotten far too cushy for me. They feel they're entitled to quick solutions. I respect Sierra games and earlier adventures because they spit in the face of this idea. I'm not saying this pointing fingers at anyone here. To be fair, this is a pretentious idea, but I'm a pretentious bastard.

Honestly, this topic scares and frustrates me. I came here to make games under such design philosophies, but this leaves me wondering, as a designer, who exactly I'm making games for. Because I don't think anyone here would play any game I would make if they wouldn't play a game like Gold Rush or Kings Quest III. And what about the remakes by AGDI and Infamous? These are nowhere near mediocre. These games are some of the best to come out of AGS and deserve every bit of respect they can get. I agree that walking deads are bad...but I've never played a Sierra game that had more than one...I'm probably forgetting one, and I honestly can not say that one bad puzzle makes an entire game bad. Full Throttle had an incredibly obscure puzzle...and so did Monkey Island 1 and 2....those aren't considered bad games.

I like how if you disagree with the complaints against Sierra, you're a Sierra fanboy. It's like, you can only like one (Sierra) or the other(Lucasarts), but you can't like both. That's complete bullshit.

It's not all about design, but to an extent, most of my respect for the games comes from their uncompromising design. In the case of games like Gold Rush, uncompromising is an understatement. I'm nowhere near an aged adventurer...not like most here probably are. I love Sierra and Lucasarts equally, with some other companies thrown in as equals, but I never played an adventure game until the year 2000. Of course I was nine then, so starting from an early age helped give me a similar amount of nostalgia and love for the genre. But my arguments for Sierra themselves stem from a recent place. I'm one of these weird guys that thinks that adventure games got dumbed down more and more and more and more as the years went on because people believed the genre needed simplification. Oh well, back to playing Moonmist for me, I guess.

You won't find me saying Sierra is better than Lucasarts or some AGS games I've played, but I will never agree to say they're worse either.

My mind blanks when I see people bashing Sierra. No, I don't hate anybody, and my anger is not personal, as once I see the bashing everyone gets clumped together in an "evil Sierra hater" collective, but I bet anything that the things that you people consider flaws I consider great strengths in gameplay, because I have thought it out. I really don't care how much the game frustrates the player or rips the player apart as long as it's winnable in the long run. I consider Gold Rush and Leisure Suit Larry III masterpieces of adventure game design. And to be fair, when I said Sierra games shouldn't be called mediocre, I forgot about Phantasmagoria 2, which I will definitely be the first to call mediocre. I hate Leisure Suit Larry 6 and I don't care to play 7 and on. 5 isn't mediocre but it's the least of the best of the series. People who say the parser games or the QFG games are bad will find themselves in a fight with me. And the parser games are the worst of them all by the popular opinion. So when I see the bashing, the first thing I think of is the parser games. I'll apologize for my rashness, but never for my "blind Sierra fanboyism".

I don't like it when people say a game is bad just because they couldn't handle it. From an objective standpoint, this is the idiot's opinion to me. I remember a time when Sierra games were revered for their death sequences and people played them 50% because they wanted to see all the random and hilarious ways you could die. I don't see any of those people anywhere anymore, and apparently having the opinion that these deaths were bad poorly-thought-out game design is cool now or something.

But truthfully, 75% of the reason I'm backing down is because I greatly respect Mark. Even if Kinky Island doesn't have a random plant that finds you and kills you within 15 minutes, with no possible way to escape.

I have no respect for someone who doesn't like Sierra or calls one of their games "mediocre", and I never will. Ever.

Well, this applies to adventure game fans only...

Huh. I had memories of this game looking amazing but now that I look at it again it's bizarreness borders on the excess. Still, it's too bad it tanked.

I don't know where you get the idea Tim Schafer is rich. What game made him rich? It wasn't Psychonauts, or Stacking, or Costume Quest, or Sesame Street....was it Brutal Legend? The game had pretty disappointing sales in comparison to mainstream titles- not terrible but definitely not enough to make Tim Schafer a billionaire fatcat. As far as doing what we do every day, I don't know anyone around here besides Mark Lovegrove and Dave Gilbert who runs or plans to run a professional video game company. Because that's what Tim Schafer does. This is a smaller project, and you forget Ron Gilbert is also working on a separate Double Fine game that didn't use Kickstarter. Not to mention the fact that they probably have unannounced projects that they put money towards, or the fact that they always got backing from publishers for their previous games. It seems like you're assuming Schafer is a rich fatcat just because he's getting so much exposure, and because he rose such a huge number in his fundraiser, but he's not getting exposure because he's rich and can buy it, he's getting it because people respect his creativity and his output. He got so much from the fundraiser because people love his work and want to see him succeed. Simple as that. He didn't expect any more than 400k, and he didn't ask for more than 400k. He has no reason to give the remainder back when people WANTED HIM TO TAKE THE MONEY AND USE IT. As an adventure game fan, I don't see any reason for this to "sicken you". Tim Schafer is the lead of a small company, and this 3.4 mil is barely a scratch compared to the budgets most professional games require nowadays. He's not the devil.

I foresee great things for Screen 7, and I am incredibly proud to be a part of this.

Nearly at a half a million. It made 400k in eight hours. This is a slap to the face of anyone who ever said adventure games are dead.

Game developers have been learning all the wrong lessons from the adventure games of the past, and The Dig is no exception when it comes to a game that people glean all the wrong positives and negatives from. The greatest aspect of the adventure game, arguably, is exploration. Every single bit of the design of the Dig is suited toward exploration of a new, alien world. A world that doesn't operate under typical human thought, but an alien thought. A mode of thought that must be pieced together in order to understand it and thus survive. The Dig is a great example of fabulous design. Exploration isn't about convenience, but the adventure game of today typically is. That's why we've got games like Back to the Future that run on convenience and little to no exploration. Puzzles are part of the discovery and the progression, but a good adventure game is all about giving the player freedom to explore. That's why so many older games with "too many verbs" and text adventures are so great to me. They give more options to explore. Yes, this makes design tougher and sometimes it can fall apart. But it's better than what we've got now, because what we've got now doesn't get the core of the genre. Games like Indigo Prophecy and The Last Express are incredible because they have a plethora of options available to the player, and thus more freedom to explore your environment and the possibilities therein. A one click- two click interface is restrained and lazy. The Last Express ran on schedules, leading to a feeling of unpredictability, which made exploring its environment dangerous and thrilling. Gold Rush, for me, is one of the greatest adventure games ever made by this logic. It's also one of the most difficult, but it's by no means impossible.